


With a Nonchalant Hand

by DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered, thebraveandthebroiled



Series: A History of the Senses: A 5 + 1 About Daphne Kluger [1]
Category: Ocean's (Movies), Ocean's 8, oceans 8
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/F, Sensuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 09:49:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15240762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered/pseuds/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebraveandthebroiled/pseuds/thebraveandthebroiled
Summary: Rose fits Daphne for a new dress and in the process reacquaints her with her sense of touch.





	With a Nonchalant Hand

“So…” Tammy had wondered aloud to Daphne that night she’d first appeared at the hideout.  “...you’re getting involved in a life of crime because … you’re lonely?”

She’d shrugged dismissively.  But it was true. Lonely, and really, a little alienated.  Didn’t have many women friends. Was more excited about that prospect than she maybe should be.  It wasn’t by choice that she’d led a largely unexamined life.

Rose was the first to make her feel a little less lonely.  It had happened when she was measuring Daphne for the dress she made for the gala.  Daphne had a thing for accents and Rose’s Irish lilt sounded so nice in her ear, and her breath had felt so warm murmuring against her neck as she listened to the designer wax ecstatic about it.   _You have the only neck in the world that could carry off this necklace,_ she’d said.  It might have been a bullshit line but she’d said it with conviction.  It gave Daphne the kind of warm tingle in her stomach that she’d grown addicted to.  Dance for compliments. It was Pavlovian. She couldn’t help it.

And now Rose was dressing her again, this time for an after party at a London nightclub.  An important link in Debbie’s brilliantly constructed chain was going to be there, the party was exclusive (“Not even air can get in there,” Debbie had commented, “but Daphne Kluger can.”), and Rose was going to make her look like several million bucks.  All Daphne had to do was slide up to him and slip the little GPS into his pocket without his notice.

Daphne stood still, with her eyes closed, arms lifted, while Rose’s hands worked, deft and gentle.  Pale sun filtered through the window of their hotel room, and the soft early strains of Delibe’s “Flower Duet” from the opera _Lakmé_ filled the air.  Rose liked opera when she worked.  Daphne felt Rose’s hands take the seams on either side of her waist and pinch them in a little.  Her touch was sure, unworried, that of a master who knew her craft. Twitchy, morose, anxious Rose was another creature entirely when she was engaging with her art.  She felt Rose rock up on her toes, her chin resting on Daphne’s shoulder, to look in the mirror and see whether she’d pulled it in enough. “Ah, lovely,” she sighed.

“Who, me?” Daphne joked.  But it was not entirely a joke.  

“You,” Rose agreed, “in _my_ dress.  Now hold still.”  And she dropped a casual, thoughtless little peck on Daphne’s bare shoulder.

Daphne sighed a happy little sigh.  She liked dress fittings, always had, even as a child star, because it involved being touched, usually with great care, but included no sexual demands whatsoever.  Even as she got older, she felt as if she never got much of that. Everyone always wanted something from her. She held her breath now, as Rose carefully put the pins in her dress, careful not to stick her.  She opened her eyes a little to look in the mirror. She was draped in red velvet and Rose, as usual, had sculpted something that flattered every inch of her rather long frame. “Magnificent,” she purred.

“You’re bloody right I am,” Rose responded with a little smirk, adjusting her glasses to inspect her work.  She was running her fingers repeatedly over a spot at the small of Daphne’s back, muttering to herself.

“Feels nice,” Daphne sighed.  The music lifted, and the sopranos overlapped each other, their voices clear, passionate, precise.  She saw Rose’s eyes in the mirror dart up to look at her, then drop back down to their task. Rose’s fingers moved up to the hem of the dress where it wrapped around her back, just beneath her shoulder blades.  A few straight pins stuck out of her mouth as she squinted at the hem, then ran her fingertips along it, to Daphne’s great delight. She couldn’t help a little happy sound. Not so little, actually, if she were being honest with herself.  She may have moaned. A bit.

Rose made a little noise of bemusement, paused, and then did it again.  Daphne shivered. “I’m trying to work, love,” Rose scolded through lips clenched around pins.  That little tremor in her voice, Daphne thought, was so at odds with the casual confidence of her touch, which never faltered as she worked.  Rose had never stuck her, not even once.

Daphne turned on her biggest, most dazzling movie star smile.  “And you’re doing beautifully. You’re a genius.”

She continued to stare into the mirror.  Rose lifted an eyebrow and then trailed her fingers across Daphne’s back again.  Daphne’s eyes slipped closed. It was hard to explain why, but there was an intimacy to it that filled her with that warm tingle, like the kind she got from adulation, but different, too.  They stayed motionless in that warm little moment, and then Rose whispered, “Hold still.” Her voice shook a little, again, but her hands were sure.

Daphne held still.  Rose took the pins from her mouth and stuck them along the hem.  Then Daphne heard her take a deep breath and move around in front of her.  

They stood staring at each other for a moment, Rose appraising her with a hard-to-read look.  Fondess? Sympathy? “You don’t get touched very much, do you?” she wondered aloud.

Daphne shook her head.  “Not like you do it.”

Rose’s face softened into a smile, then.  She reached up and her very gentle, sure fingers traced down Daphne’s neck.  “And how’s that?”

Daphne trembled and closed her eyes.  “Like you enjoy it, but more than that, like you…”  She gasped a little as Rose’s fingers traveled lightly up the sides of her neck again, and then back down.  “...like you’re handling something delicate that you don’t want to damage.”

“Aren’t I, though?” Rose murmured.  

Daphne bit down on her lip.  She felt Rose’s fingers trace down her chest, and stop at another hem.  The sopranos lilted, rose, fell, and the color came to Daphne’s cheeks. Rose’s fingers traced along her cleavage, and then again, softly, commanded, “Hold still.”  And Daphne held her breath as Rose’s fingers tucked and pinned the fabric.

The aria built, swelled, repeated.  Rose took Daphne’s arms and lifted them above her head.  Daphne sighed, ecstatic. “Hold them here, just like this,” Rose’s voice came soft as the velvet of her dress.  And her fingers drew down Daphne’s arms, and she murmured again, “Hold still.”

“Are they singing in Italian?” Daphne asked weakly.

“French,” Rose replied, and then a brief quiet followed, filled with song, as Rose inserted more pins, and then gently lowered Daphne’s arms back to her sides.

“What are they saying?”  She wanted to know. She wanted to remember the words in the air so that she could hang them on this memory.  

The final pin had been pinned, and Rose began to unfasten the dress with her masterful, unhurried hands, undrape it from Daphne’s body.  As she did, she spoke in quiet, accented tones against Daphne’s skin, the translation of the lyric to the aria as it filled the room.

_“Bank in bloom, fresh morning,_

_On the flowering bank, laughing in the morning…”_

Rose’s voice caught on the word ‘laughing’ as if she herself could hardly believe the curious closeness that had settled between them.  The two sopranos’ voices rose and fell, twined and separated. The master made certain that her work was removed with all gentleness and care.

 

_“Call us together._

_Come, let us drift down together…”_

 

With the air breathing softly across her body, Daphne stood before the mirror, shivering in the cool, and trusted herself and her skin to the quiet confidence of Rose’s hands.  The voices rose and fell and London traffic muttered in the distance. Daphne knew she was inventing it, but she swore she could hear the Thames.

 

_“Ah! Let's glide along_

_Let us gently glide along; For its enchanting flow_

_The fleeing current;_

_Let us follow the fleeing current…”_

 

The moment would inevitably slip away, as moments always did, but for now, she could dwell in the tenderness of Rose’s touch and the swelling of the sopranos and their ethereal harmonies, filling her from the ends of her hair to the soles of her feet.  She could dwell in the musical rise and fall of Rose’s voice as she spoke the words. Even with her breath and unsteady and voice trembling, Rose’s hands were steady and true.

 

_“On the rippling surface,_

_On the rippling surface…”_

 

Yes, Daphne thought, as the waves of warmth danced along her skin.  The sweat broke on her forehead. The song was nearing its peak.

 

_“With a nonchalant hand…”_

 

Rose was a master, worthy of Daphne’s implicit trust.  

Daphne watched herself, watched her own crescendo in the mirror, trusting Rose’s touch to bring everything into harmony, easily, expertly.  

 

_“...With a nonchalant hand.”_

 

Rose’s voice murmured gently.  The words flowed out. The sopranos’ heavenly song had exhausted itself.

There was work to do.  But not now. And she would not be alone to do it.

 


End file.
